Although plastic materials are used in many industrial applications, because of their inflammability, flame retardants are formulated to plastic materials in order to afford them flame retardancy.
Conventional flame retardants include, for example, a phosphorus-containing compound such as a phosphoric acid ester, ammonium polyphosphate or red phosphorus, a halogen-containing compound such as tetrabromobisphenol A, decabromodiphenyloxide or chlorinated paraffin, and a metal compound such as magnesium hydroxide, aluminum hydroxide or zinc borate. Among these, a halogen-containing compound is excellent in flame retardancy and is widely used.
However, a resin formulated with a halogen-containing compound has problems of releasing hazardous halogen-containing gas and generating much smoke on combustion. Generation of hazardous gas and smoke increases the risk of physical disaster danger at the time of fire. Accordingly, safety of the material is an important technology along with the technology for flame retardancy.
Although a phosphorus-containing compound is a material that generates little smoke, for example, ammonium polyphosphate is not necessarily satisfactory from the viewpoint of flame retardancy and water resistance.
Further, a metal compound represented by magnesium hydroxide releases no hazardous gas during thermal decomposition and is a material excellent in the smoke suppressant effect. However, it is not necessarily satisfactory from the viewpoint of the flame retardancy.
The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a new high performance flame retardant having an excellent flame retardant and smoke suppressant effect, and a new flame retardant resin composition containing it.
The present inventors have conducted an extensive study to develop a high performance flame retardant to obtain a flame retardant resin composition excellent in flame retardancy and smoke suppressant effect, and as a result, have succeeded in accomplishing the present invention.